Abstract

On the face of it, terms like 'the author,' the canon,' literature' -and its many sub-categories, 'lyrical poetry,' Australian short fiction,'and so on - appear simply to describe essential, objective, positive,things. While such terms are certainly descriptive, they have amuch more fundamental function, in fact constructing the twomain properties that make up cultural activity of a text-based kind:who can be thought of and who counts in cultural production; andwhat can be thought of what counts as a cultural product.Questions about who makes and values certain kinds of textsare questions about the nature of the cultural field in which agentsand their products compete. They are questions which attempt todislodge the view that literature can be thought of as a set of culturalproducts which exhibit special features (literary features) that can beidentified by disinterested users of this literature. In order to answersuch questions, as I try to do in Part 1, I have cast my net widelyacross a range of literary, sociological, historical and institutionaltheories to uncover some of the practices that determine how agentsoperate in the cultural field, to show how 'the author' and 'the text'are not simple, objective categories to be consumed by 'the reader.'Rather, 'the author,' the text' and 'the reader' are the outcomes ofcontests between various players, embedded for longer or shorter periodsin the practices current in the field. So-called post-structuralist theory and the cultural theory ofMichel Foucault, in problematising cultural production, provide auseful starting point for an examination in Chapter 1 of the problemof the author, authority and authorising as social practices. Nolonger free-standing and neutral, cultural producers and the textsthey produce become interested parties in a cultural system. Butsuch a view opens up a new set of problems: to do with the view of acultural producer or text as a kind of automaton in the system; andto do with the question of the capacity for social agents to effectchange in that system. I turn to social theory in order to explain howit is that social agents are more than the ghosts in the machine thatpost-structuralist theory might suggest, at once able to obey and to change the prescriptions that pre-exist at any particular culturalmoment in which texts are used.To see why particular kinds of cultural agent and productcharacterise and endure in the cultural field requires an understandingof the historically constructed and institutional ways in whichthe field works. Writing and reading books are institutional practicesand the agents who have, since the eighteenth century, been creditedin western culture with the central place in this cultural productionhave, as I try to show in Chapter 2, continued to occupy this positionby virtue of institutions which foreground writing as a product ofthe originary genius of the individual, autonomous and copyrightowningauthor. Authors, that is, are products of historically particularsocial practices which apply in the field of cultural production.They occupy a social position which has been reasonably durable, myfocus in Chapter 3, because the chronically recurring commercialand pedagogical practices embedded in institutional behaviour continueto have a hand in the consecration of the individuals whoachieve the name 'author' and in the initial production and subsequentvalorising of particular 'literary' texts. My method in Part 2 is to examine several case studies in order tosee how agents and institutions in the cultural field work in moredetail. My focus is to show how short story anthologies, critical studiesand other key practices construct 'Australian short fiction.'Anthologies are a major institution in the production and reproductionof the sub-field of 'Australian short fiction.' They help to determinewhat is to count as 'Australian short fiction,' who are tocount as writers, editors and critics of 'Australian short fiction' andhow 'Australian short fiction' is to be read. Apparently objective culturallandmarks like 'The Bulletin style,' Australian women's writing'and 'The Balmain school' - case studies examined in Chapters 4and 5 - each owe a great deal to short story anthologies.Anthologies are not, of course, the only institutions that determinethe sub-field, as I show in Chapter 6. Reference guides andcritical studies function in the same way, determining, for example,what 'fiction' or 'the work of David Malouf means and how it is tobe read. But the personnel who produce, deliver and consumecertain kinds of content, the activity that dominates the sub-field of 'Australian short fiction,' are also maintained by means of otherinstitutions, like 'small magazines,' Australia Council grants and'Writers in Residence' programs, writers' festivals, and so on, myfocus in Chapter 7.In the pages that follow I suggest that there is some kind ofbedrock 'reality,' an objective mechanism that constructs the objectcalled 'the cultural field' that my analysis has 'uncovered.' Besidesthis archaeological trope, a favourite of mine, my 'case studies' alsoimply a kind of quasi-scientific objectivity. Analytical 'study' standsoutside, usually above, the 'cases' which I scrutinise in Part Two. Butif I am right, if texts are the products of always contestable and historicallycontingent social practices, then the same must be true ofmy own text too: it is as much a case to be studied and, if studied, canbe shown to be equally the product of always contestable and contingentsocial practices. This is not cause for panic, merely for caution.My thesis is not an attempt to get any closer to the truth, only to suggesthow we might reorientate ourselves to some texts.

Item Type:

Thesis
(PhD)

Keywords:

Australian literature, Australian fiction, Short stories, Australian

Copyright Holders:

The Author

Copyright Information:

Copyright 1998 the Author - The University is continuing to endeavour to trace the copyrightowner(s) and in the meantime this item has been reproduced here in good faith. Wewould be pleased to hear from the copyright owner(s).